COUNTERCOLUMN: All Your Bias Are Belong to Us

Bob Herbert comes up with a breathtakingly ignorant column today.

You might think that the debacle in Iraq would be enough for the Pentagon, that it would not be in the mood to seek out new routes to unnecessary wars for the United States to fight. But with Donald Rumsfeld at the apex of the defense establishment, enough is never enough.

So, as detailed in an article in The Times on Dec. 19, Mr. Rumsfeld's minions are concocting yet another grandiose and potentially disastrous scheme. Pentagon officials are putting together a plan that would give the military a more prominent role in intelligence gathering operations that traditionally have been handled by the Central Intelligence Agency. They envision the military doing more spying with humans, as opposed, for example, to surveillance with satellites.

Oh, perish the thought!!! After all, if only we had better satellites, they could have picked up those boxcutters on 9/11/01. No, it's not as if Al Qaeda actually did an end run around our technological prowess and satellite technology and exploited the lack of HUMINT, right?

Further encroachment by the military into intelligence matters better handled by civilians is bad enough.

Objection, your honor: Assumes facts not in evidence. It has not been established that intelligence is better handled by civilian agencies. It was, after all, George Tenet, a civilian, that assured the President of a 'slam dunk' case of WMDs in Iraq, right? Hell, the CIA did such a fantastic job of predicting 9/11, the Cole incident, finding Mohammed Farah Aideed, the invasion of Kosovo, and the fall of communism in Russia.

"Among the ideas cited by Defense Department officials is the idea of 'fighting for intelligence,' or commencing combat operations chiefly to obtain intelligence."

Damn right. That's one of the many advantages of the offensive. You get to go through their file cabinets and raid their computer hard drives. You don't learn ANYTHING on the defensive, except what the enemy has already done.

Armies have been executing raids, prisoner snatches, reconnaisance in force, and movements to contact for the express purpose of developing intelligence since the dawn of modern warfare, you drooling ignoramus!

That is utter madness.

No. It's reality. Sorry you've led such a sheltered life, Bob.

The geniuses in Washington have already launched one bogus war, which has cost tens of thousands of lives and provoked levels of suffering that are impossible to quantify.

Objection, your honor. It has not been established that the US attack has indeed, provoked new levels of suffering. Indeed, it's been well established that the suffering was already in place, and was indeed even more widespread before the US intervened.

Ignorance of military affairs is one thing. But combining it with a short and selective memory is a horse of a different loving.

We don't need to be contemplating new forms of warfare waged for the sole purpose of gathering intelligence.

What's new about it, Bob? C'mon. Explain to me what's novel about taking the offensive to develop intel?

Part of this plan to further aggrandize Mr. Rumsfeld is being drafted under the direction of Lt. Gen. William Boykin, a deputy under secretary of defense who has already demonstrated that he should not be allowed anywhere near the most serious matters of national security. General Boykin, who once had the job of directing the hunt for Osama bin Laden, is an evangelical Christian who believes God put President Bush in the White House.

Wow. I've never seen so many logical fallacies condensed into a single paragraph. It's almost Dowdian!!!

But Herbert manages to simultaneously become ensnared in argumentum ad homineim circumstantial and denying the antecedent: Even if you accept the premise that Boykin is an evangelical Christian, it does not in any way undermine or counter the logic of the offensive as a means to develop intelligence. But watch how Bob Herbert embraces his fallacy.

He has described the fight against Islamic militants as a struggle against Satan and declared that it can be won only "if we come at them in the name of Jesus."

True. But again a nonsequitur. Thomas Jackson was an evangelical, too. And one who understood the value of the offensive, and kicked the crap out of the Union in the Valley.

General Boykin asserted his views in speeches that he delivered in his military uniform at religious functions around the country. In one speech, referring to a Muslim fighter in Somalia, the general said: "Well, you know what I knew - that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."

Nonsequitur. Boykin could have appeared at religious functions wearing a ballerina tutu and claiming that Moses was half wizard, half platypus and it would still have no bearing on whether offensive action for the purpose of developing intelligence makes sense.

General Boykin was forced to apologize after media accounts led to widespread criticism.

Yeah, yeah. MacArthur and Patton were both roasted in the media, too. So was Robert E. Lee.

How difficult is it to come to the conclusion that this is not a fellow who should be making decisions on matters involving armed conflict with Muslims?

It doesn't matter if we're in armed conflict with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It still makes sense to develop intelligence through offensive operations. (The alternative is the strategic defensive. Which is otherwise known as "losing." Putz.)

"The last time Mr. Rumsfeld tried to force himself into the intelligence collection and analysis business, he created a boutique C.I.A. in the bowels of the Pentagon under the command of Douglas Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy. The office essentially fabricated a link between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden - a link used to justify the Iraq invasion, and one that Mr. Rumsfeld was not getting from the C.I.A."

Herbert is propagating a lie, here. Rumsfeld was right: There was a link between Saddam and Al Qaeda. (Zarqawi). It may not have been an operational link. But Herbert, drooling ignoramus that he is, is incapable of discerning anything other than an operational link, because he apparently doesn't understand logistics.

As Mr. Rumsfeld sees it, if the professionals won't give you what you want, find someone who will.

Again, Herbert seems wholly ignorant of some pretty basic facts here. The fact is that the military has always had its own intelligence shops separate from the CIA. Keeping an intelligence agency within the Pentagon is not a Rumsfeld creation. For instance, Mr. Herbert, you may be surprised to know that the Defense Intelligence Agency has been in existence for 40 years.

Indeed, Mr. Herbert, had you had even the foggiest inkling of what the Hell you were talking about, you would also have been aware that Union General George B. McClellan also developed an in-house intelligence/counterintelligence capability, under the direction of Allan Pinkerton.

I have no idea where Herbert gets the idea that the only professional intelligence organization in federal service is the CIA. Well, actually, I do know. Ignorance.

The rest is just the wrongheaded conclusions of his singularly misinformed illogic. But it's always rich when someone from the New York Times, of all places - and particularly one so clearly and completely out of his depth, accuses other people of hubris.

Splash, out

Jason